Hispano-Celtic languages


Hispano-Celtic is a hypernym to include all varieties of Celtic that were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans :
Western Hispano-Celtic is a term that has been proposed for a language continuum of dlalects, ranging from Celtic Gallaecian, Tartessian to Lusitanian, which has sometimes been labelled "para-Celtic", located in the Iberian peninsula west of an imaginary line running north–south linking Oviedo and Mérida. According to Koch, the Western Celtic varieties of the Iberian Peninsula share with Celtiberian a sufficient core of distinctive features to justify Hispano-Celtic as a term for a linguistic subfamily, as opposed to a purely-geographical classification. In Naturalis Historia 3.13, Pliny the Elder stated that the Celtici of Baetica descended from the Celtiberians of Lusitania since they shared common religions, languages and names for their fortified settlements.
As part of the effort to prove the existence of a western Iberian Hispano-Celtic dialect continuum, there have been attempts to differentiate the Vettonian dialect from the neighbouring Lusitanian language using the personal names of the Vettones to describe the following sound changes :
  1. *perkʷ-u- > ergʷ- in Erguena.
  2. *plab- > lab- in Laboina.
  3. *uper- > ur- in Uralus and Urocius.